Taming Wild Animals
by PaBurke
Summary: The Pulse happened in Denver just like it happened everywhere else.


Taming Wild Animals

By PaBurke

Summary: The Pulse happened in Denver just like it happened everywhere else. What happened to all the other transgenics that escaped with Max?

Crossover: Dark Angel and Magnificent Seven (ATF 'verse) Part of my 'Minor Transgenic Stories'

Spoilers: How do you have spoilers for an AU? And Season one of Dark Angel

Rating: kid-friendly

AN: this was a challenge for me to write a story without using any dialogue. It's different, and I don't think I like it. And the AFT 'verse of the Magnificent Seven was not my idea. Thanks MOG for making it happen.

*

The Pulse happened in Denver just like it happened everywhere else, but there were forceful personalities to keep the people and the damage in check. It was no surprise to anyone tangled in the law enforcement web that Christopher Larabee stepped forward and refused to let chaos happen. He, his team and most of the ATF stood in the gap so that Denver didn't spiral down as far as other cities. The relationships built beforehand with other arms of the law enforcement were strengthened in the adversity. When the mayor and city hall went down in a riot, Judge Travis appeared from wherever Larabee had stashed him and declared marshal law and a curfew. The jails had emptied in the confusion. Most criminals knew that other cities would be easier pickin's than Denver with ATF Team Seven and Travis in charge. They left. Larabee and his teams had most of the remaining troublemakers locked up within forty-eight hours of the Pulse. Travis appointed judges and even started the courtroom justice process with his normal efficiency, something that much of the rest of the country was dispensing with as an unneeded trapping.

Those who hadn't heard of Team Seven before soon were thankful for their presence. On the street level, Nathan Jackson's healing hands as he coordinated the ambulances were mentioned alongside Josiah Sanchez's words of wisdom, commonsense and comfort –and his right haymaker for when the aforementioned didn't work. Vin Tanner was known for his excellent shot and for negotiating a two-week truce between all the gangs of Denver. The truce lasted long enough for JD Dunne, yet another member of Team Seven, to get communication and electricity back on-line with an unheard degree of reliability in the Post-Pulse world. People who knew that Team Seven had seven members wondered where Standish and Buck Wilmington had gotten to. Most people in Denver didn't realize that other cities had experienced a complete breakdown in the banking system and basic commodities. Fewer people ever found out about the utopia that had been created on the Larabee and adjacent ranches.

Chris Larabee was front and center of most of the re-workings of the city, getting the police presence where it needed to be, mounting them on horses long before the city's gas and diesel was used up or hoarded out of sight. Josiah was put in charge of the food distribution, trying to keep it as fair as he could for all, to those both buying and selling. Nathan kept the security around the hospitals sound. When the I_Clarion_/I started reporting on the unraveling of the rest of the country, as much as Mary Travis' sources could gather, a rumor floated around about renaming Denver Larabee City as a sincere thank you.

The glare that Larabee bestowed on the poor reporter who had brought the subject up in the man's presence was still talked about in hushed tones.

There was a second glare, no less impressive, but less effective that only Team Seven and few other people knew about. Everyone knew that Travis kept civilization in Denver. Everyone knew that Larabee kept Travis alive and enforced his decisions. Everyone knew that Larabee had personally picked Travis' bodyguards. Everyone knew that there were people out there who wanted Denver to fall just as far as the rest of the United States and the key to that would be killing Chris Larabee.

So Larabee needed bodyguards as well.

Since he had been surrounded by law enforcement doing his bidding since the Pulse, no one had given much thought to it. Then a man in a cop's uniform slipped through the armed men and stuck a knife in Larabee's ribs. The imposter committed suicide by cop and the whole city waited with bated breath as the city's finest doctors fought to keep alive the man who was already a legend.

He survived and against doctors' orders and with much fan fair, walked out of the hospital surrounded by four members of his team ten days later. Chris Larabee was seen at least once a day, to keep the public panic at bay. Most of that time, he was seen sitting behind a desk, all restless energy and barking orders. Team Seven bore the brunt of the Larabee Temper, but refused to back down. They weren't about to risk Chris to another assassin. Vin headed the security team and Ihe/I handpicked the rest of the bodyguards.

Chris was without a bodyguard shadow only on his ranch and that was because Buck and JD had set up a security system equal to that of the White House around the perimeter. He hated being caged up. He hated being responsible for so many decisions concerning everything except his own personal life.

So one morning, when Chris walked into his barn with his breakfast and found a rag-muffin urchin stuffing the horses' grain into her mouth, he decided then and there that he was going to keep the kid.

Vin hated the child on sight. Ezra wasn't much of a fan either.

Vin thought that she moved too fast and too quietly. Ezra felt that she knew too many languages. Vin saw the cat aspects; Ezra the results of the brain washings. Either way, she spelled danger to Chris and anything that was a danger to Chris was a danger to Team Seven and the entire city.

Vin and Ezra tried chasing her away, in various ways, but Chris was stubborn. He coaxed the child to stay and finally to give him a name, Tor. JD and Buck, of course accepted the girl immediately. Nathan fussed over her diet and brought extra food for her. Josiah fussed over the barcode and tried to show Tor that she was more than a thing.

Tor started coming and going as she pleased. She only spoke unless spoken to and only of matters of importance. She told Vin of the 'campers' just outside of the ranch. She played poker with Ezra. The men softened toward her slightly, but when Tor took a bullet for Chris, they were rooting with the rest of the Team for her to pull through.

They all breathed a sigh of relief when she survived. They pulled strings with the doc to prevent Tor from having a medical file. The doctor thought that they were hushing up the second (or was it the fifth?) attempt on Larabee's life. No one told him differently.

Tor never stopped looking over her shoulder, but since the rest of the Team were twitchy and distrustful, she fit right in. She was content though and accepted (and spoiled by all of them).

She didn't know if she ever got a happy ending, but it was happier than Manicore, so Tor stayed and hoped that some day she would be able to reunite with her brothers and sisters and make her own Magnificent Seven.

*


End file.
